Electronic irrigation controllers are used on residential and commercial sites to water turf and landscaping. They typically comprise a plastic housing that encloses circuitry including a processor that executes a watering program. Watering schedules are typically manually entered or selected by a user with pushbutton and/or rotary controls while observing a display. The processor turns a plurality of solenoid actuated valves ON and OFF with solid state switches according to the watering schedules that are carried out by the watering program. The valves deliver water to sprinklers connected by subterranean pipes.
There is a large demand for conventional irrigation controllers that are easy for users to set up and modify watering schedules. The user simply enters the start times for a selected watering schedule, assigns a station to one or more schedules, and sets each station to run a predetermined number of minutes to meet the irrigation needs of the site. The problem with conventional irrigation controllers is that they are often set up to provide the maximum amount of irrigation required for the hottest and driest season, and then either left that way for the whole year, or in some cases the watering schedules are modified once or twice per year by the user. The result is that large amounts of water are wasted. Water is a precious natural resource and there is an increasing need to conserve it.